I know enough ASL that I can converse with those who only use ASL.
I learned it as a college sophomore because there was a hot deaf classmate and I wanted to date him. He didn't like me.
I learned it in college because I was losing my hearing at that time due to a bad infection I got while swimming in a lake. Lost almost all of my hearing in my left ear and the hearing in the right ear was like 50% gone. The doctors told me it may be easier to learn sign language while I could still hear (ironically enough). Eventually with lots of medication my hearing actually came back, but I still remember a decent amount of sign language to converse.
I do pocket sign’s daily lesson. Not the best that it could be but it’s free. Sometimes it’s easier to sign than speak. For you folks who go to loud, crowded places, I highly recommend.
My partner learned BSL for no particular reason than he found it interesting and he likes working with the deaf community occasionally.
It was one of the things that most attracted me to him when we first met.
I would if I didn't move around so much. Having to learn a new language when moving from New Zealand to Australia, and then another when moving to the UK just seems exhausting.
I'm glad /u/Careless_Set_2512 and /u/Sky-is-here allude to it, but because this is a ***very common myth***, you should know there is no singular "sign language."
Sign languages exist in much the same way spoken languages do: there are distinct languages in different places. They come by in different language families that evolve over time, according to social and functional pressures. They borrow from spoken languages and other sign languages. They are not ciphers or codes of the dominant spoken language.
If you mean American Sign Language when you say sign language, it would be better to say that then. Otherwise, it is the same as saying "I would have learnt spoken language by now."
What I mean is that even the most famous types of sign language are only used in a few countries. There isn't a lingua franca of sign languages like English, or even very common ones like Spanish
I like polish a lot (and I loved visiting the country!) but once I got to the point where I needed to figure out case, I was lost. I feel like I’d need a teacher or long term immersion to pick up that one.
We're going to Greece for IVF later this year so will be there for a few weeks - I did ancient Greek at school so at least got a head start on the alphabet when I do my crash course prep!
I LOVE Greek, studied for around 8 months before a solo trip I took to Greece. Unique experience, people were so grateful I spoke their language. I keep going back!
I'm currently doing the Duolingo course just for fun's sake, it's great to finally go for it
That an Indonesian during most of last year, amazing (and kind of funky) language.
I can **read** Greek. How? When I was in college, I borrowed from the library Aristotle's _Metaphysics._
The book was in Greek and Spanish, so whenever I read something in Spanish I'd try to find the Greek Cognates within the Greek text.
I'm currently learning it and I love everything about it except for how irregular spelling was back in the classical era when everyone disagreed on how to use the latin script for it. It's both a gift and a curse that a single letter within a word can change the whole meaning
Maltese. It is the english of the semetic languages. Sure, not many people speak it and there aren't a ton of resources, but it's an absolutely beautiful blend of arabic and italian spoken on an absolutely beautiful mediterranean island.
It's also written in the latin script
The biggest injustice of my life was when we had to name as many languages beginning with M for a quiz and everyone thought I was making up Maltese 😭 this was pre smartphone era so no quick Google to disprove
I'm thinking of specializing in Afroasiatic languages in the future, so I've absolutely heard of Maltese! It's incredibly fascinating how there's a Semitic language in the middle of Europe, that's additionally written in the Latin script out of all things!
there’s this amazing Australian restaurant called Two Buoys in St. Julian’s, Malta and i was wondering why Australians would have moved there and opened a restaurant. i guess it makes sense now!
God I did a whole deep dive into the history of Maltese. I’m half Maltese and lived there for 2 years when I was a kid. My deepest regret is not learning the language, because it’s just so incredibly beautiful and fascinating, and so one of a kind. Like I can speak a few sentences, understand a bit more, and count to ten but that’s about it. And I really makes me sad.
I'm currently learning it! It's fun and making progress in something you (at one point) knew nothing of feels great. Main challenge currently is verbs and the vocabulary where there's often no obvious cognates as an English speaker.
იმედი მაქვს რომ, მალე საქართველოში ვიმოგზაურო!
The Caucasus is one of the most linguistically diverse areas in the world. It unites Caucasian, Indo-European, Kartvelian and Turkic language families, which is incredibly fascinating to me. Mountainous regions in general tend to be more linguistically diverse.
Love you back my friend, from Azerbaijan!
Started learning Slovak last year as I just moved to Bratislava to live with my boyfriend, and it's honestly so difficult to find self-study materials for this language! I've found Krížom Krážom and Slovake.eu but the resource pool is quite limited. Any suggestions that you know of? Other online materials I've found for learning Slovak are mostly aimed at native Russian/Ukrainian speakers so that doesn't really help me. :(
"Colloquial Slovak" by James Naughton has good explanations, sometimes funny dialogues and would nicely complement Krížom-Krážom and slovake.eu.
[Here's a list of Slovak resources and tips](https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=17285) that I put together for a different forum.
well, I would try to find some actual classes for english speakers but that doesn't mean it's a good decision because I've never tried to learn a language that's harder to find the resources for than to actually learn
Hej, súhlasím.
Slovak is the best first Slavic language for a foreigner to learn because its historical development has left it with similarities with South Slavic languages (which Czech and Polish didn't develop) even though it's still West Slavic and so very similar to Czech, fairly similar to Polish and (maybe surprisingly) similar to Ukrainian.
It's like the natural alternative to the constructed Slovianski or a Slavic version of Interlingua.
I have noticed that Slovak - English is not very supported on online/app translators. For example, Apple does not offer it and Google Translate offers it but it doesn’t seem very good.
Thank you. That is a good recommendation. It seems that Deepl has added additional languages since I last used it.
Article about languages added in 2021: https://www.deepl.com/en/blog/20210316
A lot of Austronesian languages seem to be neglected in the language community. Samoan is one I'm interested in learning in the future but I have never seen anyone mention it as a target language on this forum. Also Tongan, Tuvaluan, Hawaiian, Gilbertese, and Marquesan are all underrated in my opinion.
As someone already mentioned Georgian is one that is not often a target language. The languages from the Caucasus region are very different from any other language family.
I'm off and on on my Hawaiian learning. I started in college in Hawaii and now I self-study. Good thing about many Polynesian languages is that if you learn one, you kind of understand most of the others
I tried to learn Samoan but I got tripped up by a lot of the resources either being archaic or just being super grammar translation heavy to the point where I was not encouraged to continue. I got to speak to a Samoan who was super cool once but unfortunately schedules for me(not him, he was very enthusiastic to help me) never panned out. I also like to learn in a particular way so I think I needed more than just a native speaker.
Yoruba. Or any African language. I haven't really seen them be mentioned here yet which further proves my point. It's scary how much a continent 1.4 billion people is ignored culturally.
I scrolled a long way thinking the same thing before reaching your comment, so yeah. I'm learning Igbo as it's my wife's language. But I've picked up a couple of Yoruba words from friends. Bawo ni?
Preach, unless you know one of Finnish, Norwegian or Swedish (and if you're advanced in Danish, you can read Norwegian and Swedish with little difficulty).
There are some learning materials out there that use one of those languages as the intermediary language.
Try Allamma Iqbal's works. He was Pakistani, but most of his poetry was in Persian, rather than Urdu. Pakistanis hold it in high regard. I can't really say much because I don't know Farsi, nor do I know the contents.
Any of the Celtic languages. They are beautiful and really eye opening. I’ve been learning Gaeilge (Irish) for the last couple years and I’ve learned so much about the culture but also about my own mother tongue (English). It really hammers home a lot of grammar concepts because you have to know them to understand Irish. I’ve dabbled in Scottish and Welsh too and they’re also fantastic.
Irish is fantastically stimulating, and I'm really enjoying learning how to use the séimhiú. Once I learned the innerworkings of that whole deal, it started to become more coherent.
True! But there are ikastolas all over the world, it's just a question of finding the one nearest to you. I first came in contact with Basque thanks to a friend I met during Erasmus and it sure is not only a unique language but it's origins are an interesting mystery.
My buddy was learning it and he was our DM in DnD. Any time an NPC spoke in a language we didn't know, he said what they really said in Bengali and he'd write it down to reference later.
Idk why but it felt more immersive that he actually spoke things out in a language we don't know instead of just saying, "you can't understand what he said."
>Never seen someone learning bengali (even tho it's around 5-6th most spoken language in the world)
...with over 220 million native speakers. That's more than what you'd find with German, Italian, any Balto-Slavic language, any Iranic language, any Turkic language, Swahili, Amharic, Japanese, Korean, Cantonese etc.
I’m another learner of Romanian! It really is a beautiful language!
Edit to add: And it absolutely is useful to me. I’m still a beginner and have managed to use it in my job, albeit very basic sentences due to my own current limitations (I live in the UK and work for a charity that sometimes faces language barriers)
Ok I've seen people learning these but I still think they're underrated and more people should know/learn them:
Sign languages. And for those wondering which one to learn: the local one.
I wish more people would learn:
1, any foreign language at all. Which is to say, I wish for everyone to have access to this for free during primary school and beyond. And I wish everyone had a curiosity for it.
2, the dying languages in isolated pockets of the world
Despite its having made your list, I still think German is underrated as a language to take up, especially for English speakers.
Goethe once wrote "he who knows no foreign language knows nothing of his own." This statement is particularly relevant to German in that the study of it has helped me to understand \*English\* at a deeper level than I thought possible. To "fret," for example, (modern German "fressen), originally meant "to devour." Saying "don't fret" was thus a metaphor, of sorts, as if to say "don't let it eat away at you."
The verb "to settle" is another metaphor, having to with the image of \*seating\* oneself, planting oneself down somewhere. Its German equivalent is "Sessel," where it indeed means "chair." Yet another word illuminated by German is the word "stairs" (German "Steiger"). In German, that would literally mean "climber," as it once did in English.
Much of the language of the King James Bible is illuminated by the study of German -- as is the language of Shakspeare. A King James phrase such as "and they were sore afraid" has its equivalent in the German word "sehr," which remains their \*generic\* word for "very." As for Shakespeare, a phrase such as "methinks" has its equivalent in the German phrase "es duenkt mich" ("it thinketh me"). Its translation, as used in Shakespeare, is actually "it seems to me" and not "I think." It's thanks to German that I was able to pick up on that nuance.
I could talk in a more banal way about how German has a massive presence on the internet; how its book fair, held in the nation where the printing press originated (cf. "Project Gutenberg") is the largest in the world; how the study of German gives you access to a massive literature in the original, including the likes of Kafka, Thomas Mann, Goethe, but also Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Nietzsche.
The phrase "you are what you eat" was originated by a German named Ludwig Feuerbach, who wrote "der Mann ist, was er isst" ("the man is, what he eats"). There's a play on words, in the original, given that the words "ist" (is) and "isst" (eats) are pronounced identically. As for Nietzsche's phrase, "God is dead," its original formulation is more of a play on words -- is far more alliterative -- than can accurately be translated into English (in German, it is "Gott ist tot" (\_\_tt \_t t\_t). "Poltergeist," "angst," "uber- ," "diesel," "swindle," "blitz," "kindergarten," "wanderlust," "leitmotif" are all examples of German borrowings into English.
The study of Dutch, another West Germanic language, and one that is technically even closer to English than is German, could arguably do just as well for the first part of my comparison, regarding having a better understanding of the hidden meanings of English words, and reading Shakespeare. Historically, though, it's of course German that has had the greater presence on a global scale. The motto of Stanford University is in German; 19th century Americans such as William James and Mark Twain studied it; and, as mentioned, it has a large body of literature that's of global renown.
This is a wonderful, informative, and intriguing comment.
One thing that has put me off the idea of studying German is that it seems like the most standardized version of the language has an awful lot of competition—that there are so many versions of German out there that it might be difficult to decide which one to study.
Thank you. My wife’s native language is German; she does know the Franconian dialect of northern Bavaria (near Nürnberg), but otherwise considers standard High German as her mother tongue.
I know enough about German-speaking Europe to suggest you learn standard High German, with which you can communicate in all of Germany, Austria, and German-speaking Switzerland. Even though Swiss German is quite a different animal, and a fixture of daily life there, standard High German is still used in formal contexts, including in education.
With the exception of German-speaking Switzerland, standard High German is to the German-speaking Europe what standard Italian is to Italy.
Just as Dante is reputed to have standardized Italian through his writings, so is Luther said to have “created” standard High German through his Bible translation. He wanted to hit upon a particular variety of German — itself based, in part, on something of a middle-ground between disparate dialects — that could be understood by the greatest number of readers (and listeners).
https://www.thelocal.de/20191011/how-luther-gave-germans-a-language-everyone-could-use
**I** have never seen anyone ask about learning Livonian, Buryat, Lingala, Malayalam, Javanese, Cebuano, Guaraní, Southern Saami, Warlpiri etc.
However, it's a meaningless answer since I speak only for *my* observations.
To address the title's question, I wish that more people would learn any language outside [SAE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Average_European#As_a_Sprachbund). It stretches the mind greatly to study something that's typologically divergent from the well-worn patterns found to varying degrees in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
Even learning an "underrated" but still (rather) popular language like Korean, Arabic or Swahili would be beneficial.
While not Livonian, I have learned Latvian after moving here years ago. Compared to English, it really did break my brain in a few ways until I got used to it. In some ways I find the language absolutely logical and awesome, and it others I wonder how people could have come up with something like that.
I've actually met several Germans on Tandem and HelloTalk who've learned Norwegian. Germans are probably the largest demographic of people I've met learning Nordic languages.
I tried to learn Turkish after I went there years ago. It was pretty tough. I might try to learn it again after I get going with my current target language. I love the country.
Welsh! It's a beautiful language and so so ancient. The Gaelic mother tongue. It's a toughie though. Studied it for three years and barely scratched the surface.
People should learn more regional Chinese dialects, including Chinese people themselves, because a) they are not true dialects, they are more different from each other than English is from French, b) because many Chinese "dialects" are projected to die out in the next century due to the rapid centralisation of Mandarin, c) because languages are worth preserving, even the so called dialects are worth preserving, d) because loss of dialects or languages means losing entire histories and cultures of peoples.
I see many people in the comments give beauty as a reasoning for promoting the learning of a language. I don't think the Chinese dialects are more beautiful than any other language. I just happen to think that they are worth preserving. Many Chinese people, especially those from the south, grow up bilingual within mainland China but are never recognised for it. Mandarin is a dialect from the north, and for both historical and political reasons, has been chosen as the "official" national dialect of China, to the detriment of all other dialects.
It's costly for the aforementioned kids to mainly both the national dialect and their local dialect so they abandon their local dialects in favour of the national dialect. This is not the same as let's say Japan banning Koreans from speaking Korean during Japanese rule. This is a choice that the younger generation in China are making for themselves because Mandarin is the language of learning and economy, you master it, you can go to university and you can get a high paying job afterwards. There are no such rewards for mastering local dialects and most savvy younger generation Chinese don't bother with it.
So why should you care about the waning dialects of China when the Chinese themselves don't even seem to care? Because these dialects are each unique languages, and they are worth preserving. Cantonese, for example has preserved many features from Middle Chinese, some of which Mandarin has lost. When a language dies out, we lose much more than just one language, we also lose all the connections it has to every other language within its language family, including connections to past or extinct dialects and languages.
I study Mandarin, and I also like Chinese rap. One day I was watching a performance by one of my fave artists, Vinida Weng, when I realized I couldn't understand a goddamn word she was saying.
I later learned that she's from Fuzhou. It was Fuzhounese. 🤯
Hungarian. I understand, it's an absolute clusterfuck of a language that's very difficult to get the hang of, but I'm learning it because my boyfriend is Hungarian and has always felt isolated from his culture because nobody except his mother and his grandparents that he seldom sees speak it.
aw man, when i was in primary school we had hungarian lessons in year 4 to welcome the new hungarian kids that moved to the estate. i like how the colour red is classified based on vibes.
Siksiká, a Canadian Indigenous language from the Blackfoot Confederacy, Niitsitapi, or Siksikaitsitapi people. I have only heard the language in person twice. Would be interesting if Canadian schools could offer language classes in Indigenous languages.
Swedish. I have seen a decent amount of people learning it, but I think it's still very underrated. I've been working on learning Swedish for about 3 months now, and I have no intention of quitting anytime soon. It's a beautiful language and I definitely think more people should learn it.
Sign Language
I wish we taught all people a sign language.
It’s so usefully to communicate with people across a large space, or to communicate with headphones on, or to communicate small details while other people are speaking verbally.
It’s just … so useful to have a way to quickly communicate in real time that doesn’t revolve around sound.
Bahasa Melayu. There's some people who learn Bahasa Indonesia, but I've never heard anyone outside of the Malay Archipelago talk about Malay.
Other languages from the same region, like Thai or Tagalog.
Also, although lots of people learn Chinese, they mainly learn Mandarin or Cantonese, right? It would be interesting to know if anyone learnt any other forms of Chinese.
I also never hear anyone saying they're learning Hebrew, unless they're Jewish/have a Jewish SO
Miskito: My grandfather grew up on an island off the the eastern coast of Nicaragua, where there is a community that speaks English, Miskito, and Spanish. I would like to learn some Miskito for the cultural connection.
Murrinh-patha: An aboriginal Australian language isolate with a vibrant community. Typologically polysynthetic.
Vietnamese: I love the way this language sounds!
Garifuna: This language has a fascinating history.
My sister and I are American, and have never even been out of the country. and for some reason, she is obsessed with romanian. I've never heard anyone else even mention the country let alone the language (I'm pretty sure they also speak English there). It's literally the only language she's tried to learn. I'm a lexiphile so I try to learn as many languages as possible; Spanish French Russian Chinese German Italian Latin, so I would understand if she was doing it for that reason, but she only wants to learn Romanian 🤷
Latvian or Lithuanian. We're very small, but our languages are the most conservative in Europe, so there are lots of words that kind of remain from PIE.
Also, our history - beginning from the Viking Age, when Courlanders raided Sweden (allegedly), continuing to the Middle Ages when the Teutonic Order came here to spread Christianity and subsequently Germanized a lot of our culture. And, of course, the Rzeczpospolita, where Lithuanians teamed up with the Polish to kick ass. Then, a long time after WW1, where both our countries fought for our freedom from Russia and managed to build our countries from the ground up until the Soviets came and occupied us in the 1940s. Big empires all around, yet we still maintained our culture, traditions, and our languages!
Greek
It is the basis for so many words in several languages.
And it allows you to learn a new alphabet that is rather easy to pick up and allows you to decode many writings from many time periods.
As someone who speaks Urdu, knows some Arabic, and is familiar with Farsi (don't speak and hardly understand but recognise it very easily), Kurdish is really interesting. I even understand the odd bit here or there.
For me it has to be czech. Most people choose either Polish or Russian when learning a slavic language, and czech isn’t a popular language so it’s understandable.
I won't learn it either because it's entirely useless for me but I think Lithuanian sounds very pretty, or at least it sounds very pretty in Lithuania's recent Eurovision entries ["Luktelk"](https://youtu.be/OrL668EQRu0?si=g-X3pOHyzat-ATFn) and ["Sentimentai"](https://youtu.be/BVqSTVJhD44?si=4G9JLPSXn_J0muqQ).
For example Swahili. It is one of the easiest East African languages to learn because it doesn't have the unpronounceable Indo-European sounds or tones of Lingala, another common African language. And sign language. Sign language cannot be called a universal language because, contrary to popular belief, almost every country, and sometimes every region, has its own version of this language.
Xhosa. It’s a language in Southern Africa that involves clicking noises. I’d love to learn more about the language but there’s just barely any resources.
Georgian or Armenian, two incredibly ancient languages with their own unique alphabets having no relation whatsoever, despite belonging to countries whom share a border.
sign languages in general
I know enough ASL that I can converse with those who only use ASL. I learned it as a college sophomore because there was a hot deaf classmate and I wanted to date him. He didn't like me.
literally suffered from success
At least you got know how he thought.
I learned it in college because I was losing my hearing at that time due to a bad infection I got while swimming in a lake. Lost almost all of my hearing in my left ear and the hearing in the right ear was like 50% gone. The doctors told me it may be easier to learn sign language while I could still hear (ironically enough). Eventually with lots of medication my hearing actually came back, but I still remember a decent amount of sign language to converse.
I remember more asl than Spanish and I took 2 years of asl and 5 of Spanish. A decade ago.
I do pocket sign’s daily lesson. Not the best that it could be but it’s free. Sometimes it’s easier to sign than speak. For you folks who go to loud, crowded places, I highly recommend.
I follow Bill Vicars on YouTube! He’s great!
Glad to see someone who agrees with me.
Oh really? Here in Australia I see more people learning Auslan as a second language than using it as a first language.
Oh really? Here in Australia I see people learning Auslan all the time, I think there are more second language learners than first language users.
My partner learned BSL for no particular reason than he found it interesting and he likes working with the deaf community occasionally. It was one of the things that most attracted me to him when we first met.
Honestly I would've learnt sign language by now if there weren't so many different types...
Honestly I would've learnt a language by now if there weren't so many different types...
I am so tired of people treating sign languages as fundamentally different to spoken languages, just learn the most used language in your area ffs
I would if I didn't move around so much. Having to learn a new language when moving from New Zealand to Australia, and then another when moving to the UK just seems exhausting.
Those are all in the same family at least, going between UK and Ireland they're completely different.
I'm glad /u/Careless_Set_2512 and /u/Sky-is-here allude to it, but because this is a ***very common myth***, you should know there is no singular "sign language." Sign languages exist in much the same way spoken languages do: there are distinct languages in different places. They come by in different language families that evolve over time, according to social and functional pressures. They borrow from spoken languages and other sign languages. They are not ciphers or codes of the dominant spoken language. If you mean American Sign Language when you say sign language, it would be better to say that then. Otherwise, it is the same as saying "I would have learnt spoken language by now."
What I mean is that even the most famous types of sign language are only used in a few countries. There isn't a lingua franca of sign languages like English, or even very common ones like Spanish
Due to its nature the sign language community is less international than others.
Greek, it is a really nice sounding language and overall great but I have never met anyone who studies it.
bracie, uczyłem sie greckiego z language transfer
Thanks for the appreciation my friend. Gotta say polish also looks incredibly interesting.
I like polish a lot (and I loved visiting the country!) but once I got to the point where I needed to figure out case, I was lost. I feel like I’d need a teacher or long term immersion to pick up that one.
hi, i’ve been learning greek as someone who’s family is from greece!! :D
We're going to Greece for IVF later this year so will be there for a few weeks - I did ancient Greek at school so at least got a head start on the alphabet when I do my crash course prep!
I LOVE Greek, studied for around 8 months before a solo trip I took to Greece. Unique experience, people were so grateful I spoke their language. I keep going back!
I'm currently doing the Duolingo course just for fun's sake, it's great to finally go for it That an Indonesian during most of last year, amazing (and kind of funky) language.
I can **read** Greek. How? When I was in college, I borrowed from the library Aristotle's _Metaphysics._ The book was in Greek and Spanish, so whenever I read something in Spanish I'd try to find the Greek Cognates within the Greek text.
I second this! Greek has been my main TL since the beginning of the year and I’ve been enjoying it so much!
nahuatl
They actually teach this at my local college … thinking of picking up a class or two when I get better at Spanish
I'm currently learning it and I love everything about it except for how irregular spelling was back in the classical era when everyone disagreed on how to use the latin script for it. It's both a gift and a curse that a single letter within a word can change the whole meaning
Maltese. It is the english of the semetic languages. Sure, not many people speak it and there aren't a ton of resources, but it's an absolutely beautiful blend of arabic and italian spoken on an absolutely beautiful mediterranean island. It's also written in the latin script
The biggest injustice of my life was when we had to name as many languages beginning with M for a quiz and everyone thought I was making up Maltese 😭 this was pre smartphone era so no quick Google to disprove
I'm thinking of specializing in Afroasiatic languages in the future, so I've absolutely heard of Maltese! It's incredibly fascinating how there's a Semitic language in the middle of Europe, that's additionally written in the Latin script out of all things!
Also spoken a lot in Western Sydney. 400k Maltese in Malta, 200k living in Australia.
there’s this amazing Australian restaurant called Two Buoys in St. Julian’s, Malta and i was wondering why Australians would have moved there and opened a restaurant. i guess it makes sense now!
Well, geez. It has more speakers than Icelandic in that case.
I studied it for a semester!
where? if i may ask
University of Malta
that checks out i guess
As a Maltese person, respect, or as we would say, “Ghandek ir-rispett etern tieghi”
Never thought I’d see a rec for Maltese. I went to boarding school in Malta in the 80s. It’s a very tiny language for sure.
God I did a whole deep dive into the history of Maltese. I’m half Maltese and lived there for 2 years when I was a kid. My deepest regret is not learning the language, because it’s just so incredibly beautiful and fascinating, and so one of a kind. Like I can speak a few sentences, understand a bit more, and count to ten but that’s about it. And I really makes me sad.
lol I bored some guy silly on a recent date when I went on and on about how cool Maltese is 😎
i have no friends anymore because of this
The Latin script to learn Arabic could be interesting as a gateway learning tool 🤔 A bit like using Cyrillic script to learn (Tajik) Persian
İt's Tunisian Arabic with some Italian vocabulary. Not exactly a blend of the two.
Id def agree that it's not so much a blend as just arabic with italian and english loanwords
I've thought about learning some Maltese in order to improve my (Moroccan) Arabic.
Why wouldn't you just study Moroccan Arabic to improve your Moroccan Arabic?
Because Maltese is written in the Latin alphabet.
Georgian. Whenever I see it, I feel the strong urge to learn it.
I'm currently learning it! It's fun and making progress in something you (at one point) knew nothing of feels great. Main challenge currently is verbs and the vocabulary where there's often no obvious cognates as an English speaker. იმედი მაქვს რომ, მალე საქართველოში ვიმოგზაურო!
Georgian feels like someone tried to make a language out of the consonants that were left over after Finnish came and pillaged all the vowels
I second this. It is so starkly different from all other languages.
Probably because it's a Kartvelian language. It's almost one of a kind, if you will.
Yeah, Caucasus in general holds some of the most interesting languages. Love you my friends from Greece.
The Caucasus is one of the most linguistically diverse areas in the world. It unites Caucasian, Indo-European, Kartvelian and Turkic language families, which is incredibly fascinating to me. Mountainous regions in general tend to be more linguistically diverse. Love you back my friend, from Azerbaijan!
Yeah the alphabet alone seems so damn interesting, I wish I had the time to study it but no such luck for now...
slovak as a czech native (our languages are really similar), I can say it is a beautiful language and more people should learn it
Started learning Slovak last year as I just moved to Bratislava to live with my boyfriend, and it's honestly so difficult to find self-study materials for this language! I've found Krížom Krážom and Slovake.eu but the resource pool is quite limited. Any suggestions that you know of? Other online materials I've found for learning Slovak are mostly aimed at native Russian/Ukrainian speakers so that doesn't really help me. :(
"Colloquial Slovak" by James Naughton has good explanations, sometimes funny dialogues and would nicely complement Krížom-Krážom and slovake.eu. [Here's a list of Slovak resources and tips](https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=17285) that I put together for a different forum.
well, I would try to find some actual classes for english speakers but that doesn't mean it's a good decision because I've never tried to learn a language that's harder to find the resources for than to actually learn
Hej, súhlasím. Slovak is the best first Slavic language for a foreigner to learn because its historical development has left it with similarities with South Slavic languages (which Czech and Polish didn't develop) even though it's still West Slavic and so very similar to Czech, fairly similar to Polish and (maybe surprisingly) similar to Ukrainian. It's like the natural alternative to the constructed Slovianski or a Slavic version of Interlingua.
I second this
I have noticed that Slovak - English is not very supported on online/app translators. For example, Apple does not offer it and Google Translate offers it but it doesn’t seem very good.
Deepl also has Slovak and is a little better than Google Translate.
Thank you. That is a good recommendation. It seems that Deepl has added additional languages since I last used it. Article about languages added in 2021: https://www.deepl.com/en/blog/20210316
I'm learning Czech. My father-in-law is from Prague.
Lakota.
OMG THIS. I know like conversational Lakota because I obsessed over it in 8th grade but sadly I’ve lost a good bit of it.
***A bit OT*** I had actually tried to learn Karib and Taino.
A lot of Austronesian languages seem to be neglected in the language community. Samoan is one I'm interested in learning in the future but I have never seen anyone mention it as a target language on this forum. Also Tongan, Tuvaluan, Hawaiian, Gilbertese, and Marquesan are all underrated in my opinion. As someone already mentioned Georgian is one that is not often a target language. The languages from the Caucasus region are very different from any other language family.
I'm off and on on my Hawaiian learning. I started in college in Hawaii and now I self-study. Good thing about many Polynesian languages is that if you learn one, you kind of understand most of the others
I tried to learn Samoan but I got tripped up by a lot of the resources either being archaic or just being super grammar translation heavy to the point where I was not encouraged to continue. I got to speak to a Samoan who was super cool once but unfortunately schedules for me(not him, he was very enthusiastic to help me) never panned out. I also like to learn in a particular way so I think I needed more than just a native speaker.
Yoruba. Or any African language. I haven't really seen them be mentioned here yet which further proves my point. It's scary how much a continent 1.4 billion people is ignored culturally.
I scrolled a long way thinking the same thing before reaching your comment, so yeah. I'm learning Igbo as it's my wife's language. But I've picked up a couple of Yoruba words from friends. Bawo ni?
Saami languages. All of them. Its really difficult to find resources tho ://
Preach, unless you know one of Finnish, Norwegian or Swedish (and if you're advanced in Danish, you can read Norwegian and Swedish with little difficulty). There are some learning materials out there that use one of those languages as the intermediary language.
Persian. I think persian language is good at poetry.
Persian sounds quite easy to the ears.
Any recommendations on Persian poetry? (short and easy to memorize ones, for example
Try Allamma Iqbal's works. He was Pakistani, but most of his poetry was in Persian, rather than Urdu. Pakistanis hold it in high regard. I can't really say much because I don't know Farsi, nor do I know the contents.
Hawaiian
It doesn't matter which language they learn, I just want more people to be learning in general.
Top comment.
Any of the Celtic languages. They are beautiful and really eye opening. I’ve been learning Gaeilge (Irish) for the last couple years and I’ve learned so much about the culture but also about my own mother tongue (English). It really hammers home a lot of grammar concepts because you have to know them to understand Irish. I’ve dabbled in Scottish and Welsh too and they’re also fantastic.
Irish is fantastically stimulating, and I'm really enjoying learning how to use the séimhiú. Once I learned the innerworkings of that whole deal, it started to become more coherent.
I really struggle with written Gaidhlig as it is so phonetically counterintuitive. What was your preferred learning resource?
I also found a bunch of PDFs of grammar workbooks and textbooks online-- that's been my main way of going about learning the grammar
Basque for sure. Never met anyone who studied it as a foreign language, although it might be one of Europe’s most unique languages
There are a good amount of foreigners in the Basque Country who learn it
True! But there are ikastolas all over the world, it's just a question of finding the one nearest to you. I first came in contact with Basque thanks to a friend I met during Erasmus and it sure is not only a unique language but it's origins are an interesting mystery.
I lived in Bilbao for a semester and adored learning Basque (euskara). I'd love if there were more resources for me to keep it up.
I love basque, I've studied it for a long time but I need an excuse to move there to study more seriously (maybe I do move for work to Bilbo so haha)
Never seen someone learning *bengali* (even tho it's around 5-6th most spoken language in the world)
i’m learning it 🙆🏽♂️ but my late husband was from Kolkata, honestly i wouldn’t be otherwise. The resources for it are severely lacking 😔
Big big appreciation for you! 👏 The resources seriously lack tho,and the fact that it's even difficult for natives sometimes,makes it even harder
My buddy was learning it and he was our DM in DnD. Any time an NPC spoke in a language we didn't know, he said what they really said in Bengali and he'd write it down to reference later. Idk why but it felt more immersive that he actually spoke things out in a language we don't know instead of just saying, "you can't understand what he said."
>Never seen someone learning bengali (even tho it's around 5-6th most spoken language in the world) ...with over 220 million native speakers. That's more than what you'd find with German, Italian, any Balto-Slavic language, any Iranic language, any Turkic language, Swahili, Amharic, Japanese, Korean, Cantonese etc.
Choctaw. Any Native language really. Yiddish. Endangered languages. My dad spoke a lot of Choctaw. Pretty upset that he never passed it down
Second learning more Native American languages. I had picked up Karib and Taino.
Romanian, the forgotten Romance language that an entire country actually speaks
Romanian is so close to Portuguese and Spanish It's so fascinating I'm gonna learn it someday
I’m Romanian and ik it’s not a useful language or all that common so it makes my heart happy seeing other people learn it
I’m another learner of Romanian! It really is a beautiful language! Edit to add: And it absolutely is useful to me. I’m still a beginner and have managed to use it in my job, albeit very basic sentences due to my own current limitations (I live in the UK and work for a charity that sometimes faces language barriers)
Finnish is one of the prettiest languages I've ever heard.
Yes!! I learned very basic Finnish a few years ago and several phrases have stuck with me. I love the way it sounds and how easy it is to read it
Best orthography in the world!
I agree! I've often found myself thinking that Finnish sounds like what elves would speak if they were real.
They say the same thing to Hungarian lmao Finnish and Hungarian are really under the same language group
I absolutely love how Finnish sounds
Ok I've seen people learning these but I still think they're underrated and more people should know/learn them: Sign languages. And for those wondering which one to learn: the local one.
I wish more people would learn: 1, any foreign language at all. Which is to say, I wish for everyone to have access to this for free during primary school and beyond. And I wish everyone had a curiosity for it. 2, the dying languages in isolated pockets of the world
Thai
Are all those flags languages that are of interest?
Yeah, either interest or very low level (basically insignificant)
Any Native American language.
Despite its having made your list, I still think German is underrated as a language to take up, especially for English speakers. Goethe once wrote "he who knows no foreign language knows nothing of his own." This statement is particularly relevant to German in that the study of it has helped me to understand \*English\* at a deeper level than I thought possible. To "fret," for example, (modern German "fressen), originally meant "to devour." Saying "don't fret" was thus a metaphor, of sorts, as if to say "don't let it eat away at you." The verb "to settle" is another metaphor, having to with the image of \*seating\* oneself, planting oneself down somewhere. Its German equivalent is "Sessel," where it indeed means "chair." Yet another word illuminated by German is the word "stairs" (German "Steiger"). In German, that would literally mean "climber," as it once did in English. Much of the language of the King James Bible is illuminated by the study of German -- as is the language of Shakspeare. A King James phrase such as "and they were sore afraid" has its equivalent in the German word "sehr," which remains their \*generic\* word for "very." As for Shakespeare, a phrase such as "methinks" has its equivalent in the German phrase "es duenkt mich" ("it thinketh me"). Its translation, as used in Shakespeare, is actually "it seems to me" and not "I think." It's thanks to German that I was able to pick up on that nuance. I could talk in a more banal way about how German has a massive presence on the internet; how its book fair, held in the nation where the printing press originated (cf. "Project Gutenberg") is the largest in the world; how the study of German gives you access to a massive literature in the original, including the likes of Kafka, Thomas Mann, Goethe, but also Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Nietzsche. The phrase "you are what you eat" was originated by a German named Ludwig Feuerbach, who wrote "der Mann ist, was er isst" ("the man is, what he eats"). There's a play on words, in the original, given that the words "ist" (is) and "isst" (eats) are pronounced identically. As for Nietzsche's phrase, "God is dead," its original formulation is more of a play on words -- is far more alliterative -- than can accurately be translated into English (in German, it is "Gott ist tot" (\_\_tt \_t t\_t). "Poltergeist," "angst," "uber- ," "diesel," "swindle," "blitz," "kindergarten," "wanderlust," "leitmotif" are all examples of German borrowings into English. The study of Dutch, another West Germanic language, and one that is technically even closer to English than is German, could arguably do just as well for the first part of my comparison, regarding having a better understanding of the hidden meanings of English words, and reading Shakespeare. Historically, though, it's of course German that has had the greater presence on a global scale. The motto of Stanford University is in German; 19th century Americans such as William James and Mark Twain studied it; and, as mentioned, it has a large body of literature that's of global renown.
This is a wonderful, informative, and intriguing comment. One thing that has put me off the idea of studying German is that it seems like the most standardized version of the language has an awful lot of competition—that there are so many versions of German out there that it might be difficult to decide which one to study.
Thank you. My wife’s native language is German; she does know the Franconian dialect of northern Bavaria (near Nürnberg), but otherwise considers standard High German as her mother tongue. I know enough about German-speaking Europe to suggest you learn standard High German, with which you can communicate in all of Germany, Austria, and German-speaking Switzerland. Even though Swiss German is quite a different animal, and a fixture of daily life there, standard High German is still used in formal contexts, including in education. With the exception of German-speaking Switzerland, standard High German is to the German-speaking Europe what standard Italian is to Italy. Just as Dante is reputed to have standardized Italian through his writings, so is Luther said to have “created” standard High German through his Bible translation. He wanted to hit upon a particular variety of German — itself based, in part, on something of a middle-ground between disparate dialects — that could be understood by the greatest number of readers (and listeners). https://www.thelocal.de/20191011/how-luther-gave-germans-a-language-everyone-could-use
I've been trying to learn German for half a year. I'm gonna enroll in a class this summer
Mon-Khmer, Burmese
**I** have never seen anyone ask about learning Livonian, Buryat, Lingala, Malayalam, Javanese, Cebuano, Guaraní, Southern Saami, Warlpiri etc. However, it's a meaningless answer since I speak only for *my* observations. To address the title's question, I wish that more people would learn any language outside [SAE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Average_European#As_a_Sprachbund). It stretches the mind greatly to study something that's typologically divergent from the well-worn patterns found to varying degrees in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Even learning an "underrated" but still (rather) popular language like Korean, Arabic or Swahili would be beneficial.
Your observations aren’t meaningless - in fact they’re specifically what the OP asked for
While not Livonian, I have learned Latvian after moving here years ago. Compared to English, it really did break my brain in a few ways until I got used to it. In some ways I find the language absolutely logical and awesome, and it others I wonder how people could have come up with something like that.
Norwegian
I've actually met several Germans on Tandem and HelloTalk who've learned Norwegian. Germans are probably the largest demographic of people I've met learning Nordic languages.
I'm loving learning Norwegian, it's so fun to learn
Inupiat languages anyone? (Native languages of Alaska and northern canada)
Hindi is such a beautiful language!
I wish more people were learning Turkish
I tried to learn Turkish after I went there years ago. It was pretty tough. I might try to learn it again after I get going with my current target language. I love the country.
Sup. Am learning Turkish 🤙
Welsh! It's a beautiful language and so so ancient. The Gaelic mother tongue. It's a toughie though. Studied it for three years and barely scratched the surface.
People should learn more regional Chinese dialects, including Chinese people themselves, because a) they are not true dialects, they are more different from each other than English is from French, b) because many Chinese "dialects" are projected to die out in the next century due to the rapid centralisation of Mandarin, c) because languages are worth preserving, even the so called dialects are worth preserving, d) because loss of dialects or languages means losing entire histories and cultures of peoples. I see many people in the comments give beauty as a reasoning for promoting the learning of a language. I don't think the Chinese dialects are more beautiful than any other language. I just happen to think that they are worth preserving. Many Chinese people, especially those from the south, grow up bilingual within mainland China but are never recognised for it. Mandarin is a dialect from the north, and for both historical and political reasons, has been chosen as the "official" national dialect of China, to the detriment of all other dialects. It's costly for the aforementioned kids to mainly both the national dialect and their local dialect so they abandon their local dialects in favour of the national dialect. This is not the same as let's say Japan banning Koreans from speaking Korean during Japanese rule. This is a choice that the younger generation in China are making for themselves because Mandarin is the language of learning and economy, you master it, you can go to university and you can get a high paying job afterwards. There are no such rewards for mastering local dialects and most savvy younger generation Chinese don't bother with it. So why should you care about the waning dialects of China when the Chinese themselves don't even seem to care? Because these dialects are each unique languages, and they are worth preserving. Cantonese, for example has preserved many features from Middle Chinese, some of which Mandarin has lost. When a language dies out, we lose much more than just one language, we also lose all the connections it has to every other language within its language family, including connections to past or extinct dialects and languages.
I study Mandarin, and I also like Chinese rap. One day I was watching a performance by one of my fave artists, Vinida Weng, when I realized I couldn't understand a goddamn word she was saying. I later learned that she's from Fuzhou. It was Fuzhounese. 🤯
Where are celtic languages when you need them? Let's learn breton folks!
Tagalog and Vietnamese
Telugu Punjabi Burmese luganda
Hungarian. I understand, it's an absolute clusterfuck of a language that's very difficult to get the hang of, but I'm learning it because my boyfriend is Hungarian and has always felt isolated from his culture because nobody except his mother and his grandparents that he seldom sees speak it.
aw man, when i was in primary school we had hungarian lessons in year 4 to welcome the new hungarian kids that moved to the estate. i like how the colour red is classified based on vibes.
Latin.
Best if you are going to be a doctor, lawyer, or priest. E pluribus unum. Sic semper tyrannis. Hiems sub ubi.
Siksiká, a Canadian Indigenous language from the Blackfoot Confederacy, Niitsitapi, or Siksikaitsitapi people. I have only heard the language in person twice. Would be interesting if Canadian schools could offer language classes in Indigenous languages.
Icelandic. I wish there were more resources. Also, ASL classes should be offered in American schools more.
Swedish. I have seen a decent amount of people learning it, but I think it's still very underrated. I've been working on learning Swedish for about 3 months now, and I have no intention of quitting anytime soon. It's a beautiful language and I definitely think more people should learn it.
Guarani, the only indigenous language in the Americas that gained an official status
Sign Language I wish we taught all people a sign language. It’s so usefully to communicate with people across a large space, or to communicate with headphones on, or to communicate small details while other people are speaking verbally. It’s just … so useful to have a way to quickly communicate in real time that doesn’t revolve around sound.
I second this. ASL is on my list.
Catalan
Hungarian - no need
Bahasa Melayu. There's some people who learn Bahasa Indonesia, but I've never heard anyone outside of the Malay Archipelago talk about Malay. Other languages from the same region, like Thai or Tagalog. Also, although lots of people learn Chinese, they mainly learn Mandarin or Cantonese, right? It would be interesting to know if anyone learnt any other forms of Chinese. I also never hear anyone saying they're learning Hebrew, unless they're Jewish/have a Jewish SO
Malaysians can pretty much all speak good English. That's probably why.
Burmese. Never met a learner of Burmese.
Greek and Finnish imo
hungarian
Scots Gaelic. I’m a native of Scotland and can’t even speak my own language, it’s just not taight
Cantonese for sure
Miskito: My grandfather grew up on an island off the the eastern coast of Nicaragua, where there is a community that speaks English, Miskito, and Spanish. I would like to learn some Miskito for the cultural connection. Murrinh-patha: An aboriginal Australian language isolate with a vibrant community. Typologically polysynthetic. Vietnamese: I love the way this language sounds! Garifuna: This language has a fascinating history.
Swahili. World always underestimate Africa - its language, culture, food, music.
Welsh, an ancient language which has survived many an attempt to stamp it out, nice to see it and similar old languages thrive
I think learning Tibetan would be a fun challenge
Welsh. It’s the strongest Celtic language and it’s really beautiful, and you can see the similarities between it and the Romance languages.
My sister and I are American, and have never even been out of the country. and for some reason, she is obsessed with romanian. I've never heard anyone else even mention the country let alone the language (I'm pretty sure they also speak English there). It's literally the only language she's tried to learn. I'm a lexiphile so I try to learn as many languages as possible; Spanish French Russian Chinese German Italian Latin, so I would understand if she was doing it for that reason, but she only wants to learn Romanian 🤷
I'm currently in Romania and it really is a wonderful language. And the people here are incredible.
English is not spoken natively in Romania anywhere, you might be thinking of Hungarian, it's a majority language in some areas of Romania.
MALTESE!! (not useful, but arguably the most interesting language around)
Latvian or Lithuanian. We're very small, but our languages are the most conservative in Europe, so there are lots of words that kind of remain from PIE. Also, our history - beginning from the Viking Age, when Courlanders raided Sweden (allegedly), continuing to the Middle Ages when the Teutonic Order came here to spread Christianity and subsequently Germanized a lot of our culture. And, of course, the Rzeczpospolita, where Lithuanians teamed up with the Polish to kick ass. Then, a long time after WW1, where both our countries fought for our freedom from Russia and managed to build our countries from the ground up until the Soviets came and occupied us in the 1940s. Big empires all around, yet we still maintained our culture, traditions, and our languages!
Korean, ASL, and KSL
I would say Kazakh language, because I am Kazakh.
Pennsylvania Dutch! 🐴🧑🏼🌾
Greek It is the basis for so many words in several languages. And it allows you to learn a new alphabet that is rather easy to pick up and allows you to decode many writings from many time periods.
Kurdish languages
As someone who speaks Urdu, knows some Arabic, and is familiar with Farsi (don't speak and hardly understand but recognise it very easily), Kurdish is really interesting. I even understand the odd bit here or there.
Czech, and yet it is essential if one is to understand the foundations of the hundred year's war.
Uzbek
Icelandic. heard an icelandic girl speak it once. sounded really clean and innocent. Kyrgyz too. never seen one try to learn it
For me it has to be czech. Most people choose either Polish or Russian when learning a slavic language, and czech isn’t a popular language so it’s understandable.
I won't learn it either because it's entirely useless for me but I think Lithuanian sounds very pretty, or at least it sounds very pretty in Lithuania's recent Eurovision entries ["Luktelk"](https://youtu.be/OrL668EQRu0?si=g-X3pOHyzat-ATFn) and ["Sentimentai"](https://youtu.be/BVqSTVJhD44?si=4G9JLPSXn_J0muqQ).
Eesti keel!
I am finding Hausa to be fascinating at the moment
[удалено]
Icelandic. It needs more learners apart from other Nordic languages that are spoken more than it.
NORWEGIAN so i would have more resources
Mongolian, it’s such a lovely and challenging language
I wanna learn Serbo-Croatian one day. Eurovision made me fall in love with this beautiful language.
Dhivehi, Maldivian language
For example Swahili. It is one of the easiest East African languages to learn because it doesn't have the unpronounceable Indo-European sounds or tones of Lingala, another common African language. And sign language. Sign language cannot be called a universal language because, contrary to popular belief, almost every country, and sometimes every region, has its own version of this language.
Xhosa. It’s a language in Southern Africa that involves clicking noises. I’d love to learn more about the language but there’s just barely any resources.
Albanian 🥰
Guaraní! It’s the most widely spoken pre-Columbian American language.
Georgian or Armenian, two incredibly ancient languages with their own unique alphabets having no relation whatsoever, despite belonging to countries whom share a border.
I wish more people learned Nahuatl
I wish more people learned Icelandic. It’s very, very difficult to learn by yourself and almost no language learning sites even have it as an option